2nd half of Wall St. Journal article, By Liyan Qi, Jan. 16, 2023
China’s steep decline in births, especially compared with India’s, is likely to have big economic consequences.

India benefits from a younger workforce and younger population which helps it attract investment and build a stronger consumer market, said Manoj Kewalramani, chairman of the Indo-Pacific studies program at India’s Takshashila Institution think tank. �
�Not too many older people will be shopping for new cars, new gadgets, new homes,” he said. But he said having a large young population isn’t necessarily a blessing as providing education and job opportunities has been challenging.

As Beijing shifts from seeking to control Covid-19 to trying to revive growth, a shrinking population means softening demand for property, a pillar of economic growth for China, said Yi Fuxian, a scientist at the U. of Wisconsin-Madison. “The hyped
expectations for a strong recovery in the Chinese economy post zero-Covid might be too optimistic,” he said.

It has become increasingly hard for the Chinese govt to convince young people to have more kids to support a rapidly aging population. Already, one out of every five Chinese is 60 years or older.

Since China allowed couples to have 3 kids in 2021, local govts have tried anything from cash rewards and longer maternity leaves. To facilitate marriages, local officials have organized matchmaking events and sought to limit dowry payments.

In the latest move to encourage births, Shenzhen last week announced a plan to give local residents up to 10,000 yuan, equivalent to $1,484, as a lump-sum birth allowance and up to 3,000 yuan each year in child-rearing costs until the child is 3.

Such efforts haven’t seemed to yield much in terms of results. China’s marriage registrations, following a sharp decline in 2021, continued to drop over the first 9 months of last year, the latest official data showed.

Underlying factors, such as the dwindling number of women of childbearing age, coupled with impact from the Covid-19 control measures, accelerated the population decline.

In recent years, Beijing has put more emphasis on women’s role in educating children and caring for the elderly as birth and marriage rates drop. Meanwhile, more young women are rejecting traditional family values touted by the government and older
generations.

An art student in the western city of Xi’an said she is focusing on finishing her degree and promoting social justice, especially women’s-rights issues outside classrooms.

“No marriage, no kids for me as long as our society is still so unfair to women,” said the Xi’an native.

The student, who participated in nationwide protests in late November against Beijing’s zero-Covid policy, said she and her friends have found their voices after a series of high-profile incidents of violence against women in different parts of China,
including footage of a trafficked woman who had been chained in a shed, which sparked nationwide outrage early last year.

China has recently revised a women’s-rights law, which introduced safeguards against sexual harassment and workplace discrimination against women, but also introduced a list of moral standards for women to uphold, including “respecting social morals,
professional ethics and family values.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-population-declined-in-2022-for-first-time-in-decades-11673921036

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